


Beautiful Feathered Tyrant

by piades



Category: Batman (Comics)
Genre: Dinosaur facts, Dinosaur feathers, Fluff, Gen, Humor, The Dinosaur in the Bat cave, Timeline What Timeline
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-09
Updated: 2018-06-09
Packaged: 2019-05-19 23:55:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,057
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14883680
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/piades/pseuds/piades
Summary: There's a dinosaur in the batcave. It doesn't have feathers.Everyone knows dinosaurs had feathers.Damian must do something about this.





	Beautiful Feathered Tyrant

**Author's Note:**

> This was an excuse to research dinos.
> 
> The title is a reference to a T-Rex cousin named Yutyrannus huali, "Beautiful Feathered Tyrant". But I like to imagine that that phrase makes Tim think about the discowing costume -- the one with the feathers.

“You can’t do this to me,” Tim said to Dick. He meant to say it firmly. It came out a bit weak.

He’d had an arrow through his foot last night, and he was absolutely not moving anywhere. His usually feisty independent streak had faded with the adrenaline and now he just wanted to nap and play (not play — investigate!) on the computer.

Add to that that the fingers of his left hand were splinted, and things were, slow.

And he’d lost his voice.

In the face of Dick’s schadenfreude, his misery went unalleviated.

With a feral smile, the older man leaned against the door. “It’s just a weekend, and he’ll probably run off with his team anyway. Or go harass Jon. You’ll be fine!”

 

“This is intolerable,” Damian said, sulkily, as he wandered down into the cave — which was empty except for Tim.

“No cave till your homework’s done,” Tim answered without looking away from the hand-held thingamajig he was needling with some pliers.

“Drake, how you have let this state of affairs linger I don’t know—”

“Your continued existence? It’s Alfred that stays my hand—”

“Isn’t it a matter of pride to you? To your family?”

Tim put the pliers back into the toolbox. He didn’t know what Damian was on about, to be frank.

“You carry the Drake name! Why are you letting them sully it!”

“What are you talking about?”

“The feathers!” Damian threw his hands up — not just up, he was pointing at the plastic-skinned dinosaur in its place of honor not far from the computer. The T-Rex, with its heavy squat that made it look incapable of any but the slowest, clumsiest of movements. “Dinosaurs had feathers! That thing is the product of unscientific Hollywood propaganda!”

Tim did recall seeing something about that. His frown turned from frustration into thoughtful consideration. He reached back for the pliers. “We’re going to need a lot of feathers.”

 

Damian demanded control over the feather collection. He didn’t trust Drake to do it ethically.

 

“These are flight feathers!” Tim protested when Damian returned. “T-Rexes didn’t fly!”

Damian collected a few of the feathers that were escaping from his sack. He’d spent hours upon hours collecting them, and he was not happy to hear Tim’s protests. “So?”

“So we need something… like lyrebird or peacock tail feathers, or maybe down.”

Damian pouted. “Alright. You can go collect down.”

Tim’s foot pulsed with agony, just in time to remind him that he was not going anywhere. “You trust me around baby birds?”

Damian considered that. “No,” he said.

But he didn’t turn around and leave the cave in search of more feathers. He snagged a spot on the workspace next to Tim, and fast than Tim’s splinted fingers could intercept, tapped in the commands to give him control of half the workspace.

“Hey—” Tim growled, thinking up three ways to make the system reject Damian’s inputs — one he’d prepared earlier. A part of him was grinning with glee as he anticipated Damian’s reaction.

“They need those for keeping their nests warm,” Damian grumbled. Oh right — the down. “We have the stuff to make some feathers.”

He was looking up archaeological databases — and Tim found that he couldn’t be bothered starting that fight while he couldn’t escape.

 

Making feathers was… actually pretty interesting. The design that Damian has found was like traffic cone that someone had taken a weed-whacker to, so that strips of stuck up in pieces around its circular base.

“We could have used emu feathers,” Tim said.

“Are you kidding me? We’re not going to use feathers with hooked barbules! Those are from entirely the wrong era. Tyrannosaurus predates—”

Tim laughed.

“You were teasing me,” Damian said.

Tim smirked. “Alright, what are we going to make these out of?”

 

They ended up making the feathers out of rubber, because it was around and they could manipulate the flexibility. After that, it was time to spend another few hours on the design and creation of a feather gun for their efficient placement.

 

When Dick arrived back at the manor, it was still standing. That was a good start. He made his way down to the cave. He spotted Tim and Damian. Their faces were very, very blank. Their eyes gleamed with anticipation. Highly suspicious.

Dick smelled a trap.

He… smelled burnt rubber, and heard the whirl of an extractor fan.

There was a small, gun-shaped implement next to where his little brothers were sitting. He picked it up, watching them with silence — pointed it away, and held it.

The little gremlins stayed silent.

“If I pull this—”

“It’s perfectly safe,” said Damian.

Dick pulled the trigger. A green noodle squirmed out of the end and fell to the ground, where it split into fine strands. And there was the rubber smell.

“A… I don’t even know,” Dick said, honestly. He looked at them. “I have no idea. Help me out.”

Tim pointed towards the Dinosaur. Dick stared. His beloved dinosaur had been covered in long, rubber, stringy hairs.

“What have you done?” he gasped.

 

Tim watched Dick fret over the dinosaur and considered it his just desserts.

 

“Is this supposed to be feathers?” Dick demanded. “Did you try to cover a Tyrannosaurus Rex in feathers?”

“Yes. Because dinosaurs had feathers, whatever your terrible diet of movies has indoctrinated you,” said Damian.

“Proto-Feathers,” corrected Tim.

“The Tyrannosaurus lived in the late Cretaceous! It weighed 14 tons!” Dick wailed.

Tim blinked. Damian blinked too.

“Your biology cannot be this—” Dick ranted. He turned to Tim. “Thermo-regulation! Humid climate!”

“Dick, breathe.”

Dick gaped like a fish. “You’re kidding me. The Tyrannosaurus Rex lived in a hot environment. What happens when animals get bigger? They find it hard to lose body heat! There is no reason for it to have feathers! Do elephants have fur? No! I know you know this!”

“But my teacher—” Damian protested, then realised he’d committed the unspeakable act of acting like his teachers knew anything. “That hack. That— Drake! This is your fault!”

“Nope,” Tim said, leaning back.

“You should have known!”

Dick paused, then laughed. He scooped up the rubber feather he'd created and rubbed it between his fingers. “Okay, It’s alright. We can fix him. He might not have had this many feathers, but you can help me give Rex lips!”

“What? No!”


End file.
